“Mammoth Cave is one of a handful of national parks that were formed from private lands. Thirty communities and 700 farms covered the landscape – people lived here, worked here and died here,” Mammoth Cave National Park Superintendent Patrick H. Reed said. “Dr. Algeo’s project pulls together information that paints a picture of Mammoth Cave as their homeplace.”

Article abstract: The Mammoth Cave Historical GIS (MCHGIS) fosters new understandings of a national park landscape as a historic farming community and offers a web-based platform for public memory of pre-park inhabitants. It maps the 1920 manuscript census at the household level over a streaming topographic map and georeferences Civilian Conservation Corps photographs of dwellings for visualization and analysis of the area’s population on the eve of creation of Mammoth Cave National Park. A web interface to the MCHGIS permits broader dissemination of archival holdings. Public participation GIS techniques are adapted to initiate a virtual site of public memory to supplement the history presented by institutionally-held materials with those donated from private holdings.